Max Verstappen has said Red Bull has not fixed its troublesome Formula 1 car despite taking a stunning Japanese Grand Prix pole that he called one of his finest career laps.
The four-time world champion was bidding for his fourth consecutive pole at Suzuka, but balance issues with his 2025 Red Bull car combined with McLaren's dominant form looked set to end that streak.
But after not making much of an impact throughout qualifying, Verstappen suddenly pulled a stunning final Q3 lap out of the bag to defeat Lando Norris by 0.012 seconds and Oscar Piastri by 0.044s, his pole lap of 1m26.983s half a second quicker than he had managed in Q2.
Verstappen roared in jubilation on his team radio after his surprise pole and hailed it as one of his best ever laps in an F1 car.
"There was a lot of happiness when I crossed the line," the Dutchman said. "We just tried to keep improving our situation a bit. I was fully committed everywhere.
"I've had some really nice poles in other places but if you look at how our season started it was a surprise and that makes it a very special one.
"On the exit of Turn 1 into 2, six, seven, eight and then Spoon it was like: "Well I hope it's going to stick'. But it did and when I crossed the line I could see my name pop up.
"I also knew that Oscar was still behind me, but I was already just very happy with what I did there because I didn't expect to be even close. So that was a nice moment."
However, Verstappen cautioned that his pole lap flattered the Red Bull RB21 and that his car's handling issues are still present.
"It was a lot better than Friday but the through-corner balance is still what we need to work on," he explained.
"On low fuel over one lap you can mask some bits a little bit, but I still don't go into the lap fully confident and comfortable. So the last time I was like: 'Well, I'm just going to send it in and see what we get.'
"It's very rare that a lap like that can stick, but this time it worked well. But we know that we have some issues that we want to solve; it's clearly not easy to solve them at the moment."
